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Commentary

Child Labor or Child Prostitution?

By
Thomas R. DeGregori

October 8, 2002

I am against child labor as are the vast majority of
Americans. That is why I have been involved in economic development
in developing areas, because it is clear that technological and
economic change are vital ingredients in getting children out of
the workplace and into schools. Then they can grow to become
productive adults and live longer, healthier lives. However, in
poor countries like Bangladesh, working children are essential for
survival in many families, as they were in our own heritage until
the late 19th century. So, while the struggle to end child labor is
necessary, getting there often requires taking different routes —
and, sadly, there are many political obstacles, especially from
radical environmentalists and anti-globalization activists.

Many of the most vociferous campaigners against child labor in
developing countries have a long history of attacking technological
advances, e.g., genetically modified crops, and economic policies
that can liberate children from the necessity of working. (For
example, the anti-globalization Campaign for the Abolition of
Sweatshops & Child Labor started its 10-city tour on Sept. 24.)
Such advances have taken more children out of the fields and into
the classrooms than any activist campaigns.

Yet proposed U.S. legislation against the importation of
textiles produced by child labor — to “protect” children from
exploitation and promote their education — has had a devastating
effect in Bangladesh, especially on the lives of those for whom it
was designed to protect. I lived in Bangladesh in 1988 when raw
jute was still the leading export. Children were begging in the
streets, engaging in prostitution and other crimes, or doing hard
labor. The rapid expansion of the garment industry created better
paid, less arduous jobs for children. Though far from ideal, those
jobs were vastly superior to what the children had previously. And
they were far better than what the kids were forced to return to
when, as a result of pressure from the United States, the children
were fired by the garment industry. The one place that they did not
end up was in school. Thanks to U.S. pressure, many children went
back to prostitution and other dangerous behavior.

Certainly no institution has more credibility in defense of
children than UNICEF. The authors of the UNICEF-sponsored volume
“What Works for Working Children,” found that for children in the
Bangladesh garment industry, work was “less hazardous, more
financially lucrative, and with more prospects for advancement than
almost all other forms of employment open to children.” UNICEF
added that boycotts “run into the problem of not being able to
distinguish between good and bad working situations for children.”
UNICEF is particularly critical of using child labor as an excuse
for protectionists’ import bans, such as those that have been
promoted against Bangladesh.

The UNICEF study concluded “it is difficult to find much that is
praiseworthy, from the standpoint of a child-centered approach to
child work, in a unilateral import ban,” and action that is on the
stated agenda of those in the current campaign. Without transition
programs and provision of means of income replacement, most
campaigns to ban imports of garments produced by child labor will
make the children and their families worse off than before.
Transition programs require resources that poor countries simply do
not have. And to impose this impossible burden on them in the name
of defending the rights of children would appear to many of us to
be an undisguised form of protectionism: offering protection to a
domestic industry and not to impoverished children. There are
enough instances of abusive child labor practices around the world
that a carefully targeted campaign to improve working conditions
might be helpful, but not to the protectionist groups that often
back indiscriminate bans on child labor imports.

Developing countries increasingly see calls for bans on child
labor, or protection of the environment, or for protection of a
rural way of life in developed countries as economic protectionism.
It is clear from the street battles of Seattle that those who claim
to defend the poor may in fact be the worst enemy of the poor. Too
often the activists’ financial backers have no such illusions, as
they are promoting their own protectionist agenda. As
“transparency” has become a legitimate demand for all institutions,
it may well be a legitimate demand for the anti-technology
troops.

Thomas R. DeGregori is professor of Economics at the University of
Houston and the author of two recently released books,
Bountiful Harvest(Cato Institute, 2002), upon which this
article is based, and The Environment, Our Natural Resources
and Modern Technology (Iowa State University Press, 2002).